Ask any Icelander and they will tell you. It is a time of year when everything pulsates with vibrant activity, and the nation delights in those festive traditions that make them a tribe. Music is all around, friends gather, restaurants are filled with people partaking of festive Yuletide offerings, authors are out and about reading from their new works. Everything pulsates with vibrant, happy energy. There is even a word for the gleeful excitement one feels when waiting for Christmas-jólaskap, literally "Christmas mood". In this book, Alda Sigmundsdóttir invites you on a journey of Iceland's magical Yuletide season, all the way to New Year's Eve, and beyond. You will learn about the special foods, traditions, and customs that make Christmas in Iceland so special and meet a colorful cast of characters that are such an integral part of the Yule. In her inimitable style, and using examples from her own life, Alda gives you not only the modern version of Christmas but also the historical and cultural background to many of the traditions that are still observed today. Among the fascinating subjects broached in “The Little Book of the Icelanders at Christmas”:
• All the food: smoked lamb, ptarmigan, Sarah Bernhardt cookies, leaf bread, yum!
• Sacred customs: ringing in the Yule, candlelit cemeteries, festive dinners, family traditions
• Christmas lights and their importance (because of winter darkness)
• Essential Yuletide recipes: Sarah Bernhardt cookies, gingerbread, laufabrauð (leaf bread)
• Crazy traditions (eating putrid skate: say no more!)
• Books books books (because everyone must get at least one book for Christmas)
• The New Year's blowout (pyrotechnic madness like you've never known)
• The characters of Yule: Grýla, Leppalúði, Yule Cat, Yule Lads and murdering elves, hello!... and so much more!
